


Eurydice, walking blind

by wobblyheadeddollcaper



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, BDSM, Dom Steve Rogers, Dominant Masochism, Emotional Sex, Knifeplay, Leather Kink, M/M, Memory Loss, Post CA:TWS, Semi-Public Sex, Sub Bucky Barnes, Submissive Sadism, complex dom/sub, lgbt history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-02 00:03:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4039777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wobblyheadeddollcaper/pseuds/wobblyheadeddollcaper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky feels something clench in the pit of his stomach, all the hunger he’s been walling up for months clamoring to get out.</p><p>“Goddamn it,” he says quietly. “Okay.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eurydice, walking blind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anoneknewmoose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoneknewmoose/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Eurydice, walking blind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7459461) by [black_sun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/black_sun/pseuds/black_sun)



> Request: Hello author! I would love to see some gleefully filthy porn, especially with complex BDSM roles. A dominant bottom! A masochistic dom! I also adore AUs and world building, and leather culture. I love size difference kink and size queening and intense emotions/sensations and beards and body hair.
> 
> Dear anoneknewmoose – sorry I wasn’t able to get in everything you wanted! Five out of nine ain’t bad? I really hope you enjoy your present.
> 
> Now translated into Russian by the amazing black_sun http://archiveofourown.org/works/7459461

Bucky spots Steve on the other side of the bar and feels a pang of affection and frustration, mingled so thoroughly he can’t tell the difference. It’s been months of playing tag and keeping his distance through Americas North and South – air travel being an unacceptable risk, since his left arm doesn’t detach – and Steve seems no closer to giving up.

 _You try to do a guy a favor_ , he thinks ruefully.

The beard Bucky’s been growing starts to itch as he slips into the nearby bathroom, avoiding eye contact on the way. There’s a woman watching him speculatively, even though he’s wearing a ripped army jacket and weeks’ worth of stubble and grime. He could go home with her. It would be good cover. Steve is already following him though, shouldering through the crowd and looking out of place in his clean t-shirt and pressed khaki pants. This bar runs more to baseball caps.

Steve comes in as Bucky is pretending to wash his gloved hands. He wipes them quickly on his pants, looking for a way to get past Steve, who is standing in the only doorway.

“Quit following me!” Bucky growls, fists clenching at his sides. The one other guy in the john looks between them, finishes pissing and scurries out. Bucky squares his shoulders, making his stance a threat, and takes an aggressive step towards Steve, praying he won’t have to back it up. Steve puts one hand out against the wall, blocking the way.

“Quit running away, then,” Steve returns easily.

“God damn you, Rogers, let me past.” Bucky opens his coat to show the knife hidden there. Steve doesn’t even look at it.

“Come on and fight me if you’re going to. I won’t hurt you, not ever again,” Steve says, shifting his weight to brace himself. He puts up no defense. Sometimes Bucky thinks Steve likes getting hit. Bucky flicks his eyes up at him, then looks at the filthy tiles on the floor between them.

“I don’t want to fight,” Bucky admits softly. He has a hundred reasons crowding against each other in his throat, but the fact is betraying enough.

“You don’t have to,” Steve reassures him earnestly. “If you want to run out of this room I won’t stop you, but please - just come back to my hotel? You can leave in the morning, I won’t tell anyone.”

“I’m not that kind of girl,” Bucky says, the first thing that comes to mind. Steve blushes.

“I didn’t – I mean, I do want to, but it’s been – I meant to sleep. And get some food and medicine, if you need them.”

Bucky clings desperately to the last shred of his dignity.

“I’m fine. I’ve been surviving without you for months. You don’t need to do this-” he waves a hand, “-this good Samaritan bullshit.”

“I’m not fine,” Steve says. He meets Bucky’s eyes and holds them, letting his longing show on his face, in his starving eyes and parted lips. He moves towards Bucky, and a sense-memory from 1939 washes over him, how Steve’s mouth tastes when his lips are just that color, pink with heat.

Bucky feels something clench in the pit of his stomach, all the skin-hunger he’s been walling up for months clamoring to get out.

“Goddamn it,” he says quietly, resigned. He can refuse Steve or himself, but not both at once. “Okay.”

Steve nods, and turns to lead the way.

*

Steve’s room is in a quiet no-tell motel just north of the border, the single ancient security camera easy to dodge. Bucky stops just inside the door, at a loss without the momentum of running away.

“Want to shower? I’ll get us some food, what would you like?” Steve gestures to the threadbare motel towel on the lone double bed. He looks, Bucky thinks, like a dog that’s finally caught a stray cat and doesn’t know what to do about it. Anxious, a bit lost.

“Something with cheese on it,” Bucky says, stripping off his coat. He shuts himself in the bathroom and locks the door before taking off his long-sleeved t-shirt and gloves. The water is blissfully hot, and he watches it run grey down the drain, clearing slowly as he methodically cleans every part of his body, soaping the grooves in his left arm and using a wet towel to clean away the grime of travel. Steve makes a deliberately loud amount of noise coming back in with the food. Bucky thinks about staying inside, letting the water run cold, making Steve wait just a little longer – but he feels guilty enough already.

“What are you afraid of,” he murmurs to his reflection in the steamed-up mirror, looking at the bristled line of his jaw, the bitter twist of his mouth. He puts his dirty clothes back on before leaving the bathroom, tugging on his gloves so roughly that the stitching around the fingertips strains.

Steve bought six foil-wrapped burritos, still hot. Bucky takes one from the pile on the bedside table and sits on the room’s only chair. Steve takes one and sits on the bed, facing him.

“You look good,” Steve offers.

Bucky nods, looking intently at the foil he’s unwrapping from his burrito. He supposes that’s sadly true, given how much worse he could be looking. Steve has probably been running around worrying he’d find Bucky’s dead body in a ditch, poor guy.

After a minute, he asks “How did you find me this time?”

Steve shrugs.

“Spotted you in Tucson. It was here or Sierra Vista – Sam went that way, I went this way. You can leave your gloves off,” he continues awkwardly. “I already saw your arm.”

It is kind of warm in here. Bucky slowly removes his gloves, then finishes his burrito. He gets salsa and sour cream on his hands. If Steve touches him, he thinks he might – he doesn’t know, can only feel a smothered immensity within himself.

“Did you mean it?” he asks before he can help himself. “Do you want to-“

“Yes,” Steve says, as certain as he’s sounded all night. “Yes, I want to… kiss you. Have you. There’s not much I don’t want from you.” Steve looks away, then at him again, hands clasping like he needs to keep them from reaching out. Bucky nods once.

“You absolutely do not have to do anything about it,” Steve says emphatically. “It’s just… the way things are.”

“I know that,” Bucky says, and finds as he says it that it’s true, he remembers the feeling of being loved by Steve. It was uncomplicated in a way he can’t quite fathom now. He loved Steve back, he’s sure, but it’s buried in a whole mess of sharp and acid memories he shies away from.

“Is that why you’re running?”

“Part of it.”

Steve waits, watching him, and Bucky suddenly remembers this too, remembers long space-filled pauses like Steve could wait on him for a year as long as he got a solid answer at the end of it.

Bucky rises to pick up another burrito, but his feet draw him unwillingly to Steve, until he’s standing in front of him at the foot of the bed. Steve looks up to search his face, concern and hope at war in those blue eyes, and Bucky can’t do anything but reach blindly out for him. He moves to stand over Steve, leans down and presses his mouth against Steve’s, clumsy with haste and fear. Steve kisses him with overwhelming focus, guides him to stand between Steve’s legs and presses their bodies together. It’s good until it isn’t, the faint movement of Steve’s breath on his face tipping over from electrifying into overstimulating. He pulls away.

“I can’t. I have to-“ stop, go, something, he can’t tell. He’s panting for breath. Steve lets him go and scrambles backwards onto the bed, away from him.

“Stay the night at least? I can leave, get another room.”

Bucky’s breathing fast, lightheaded, and it takes him a minute to think.

“Okay. Okay, I’ll stay. You. Another room.”

Steve gets up and packs his bag, putting the room key on the table.

“Can I sleep in the next room over? Just in case-“ in case Hydra show up, he doesn’t say.

“Yeah.”

“Thank you. Sorry.” Steve leaves, the door locking automatically behind him. Bucky wraps his arms around himself and tries to pull it together. He sleeps, eventually, fully clothed, with one knife hidden under the pillow and another down the side of his boot. Tries to shave in the morning, but no, he still flinches away from the razor. He leaves the key in the room and walks out and away, disappointed in himself but compelled to move on.

The next morning, he goes north-east. Steve follows, but he’s keeping a bigger distance now, giving Bucky space.

*

They dance around the southern states, two steps forward to one step back. In a motel in Socorro Bucky finally shares a room with Steve, dozing fitfully in twin beds three feet apart, and gets an erection for the first time in decades. It’s visceral and weird, even stranger because he remembers he used to enjoy getting hard. He rolls away and gets up, squirming a little, and it’s gone by the time he gets to the bathroom. He’s only a little disappointed, mostly relieved.

Steve rolls over to face Bucky. He makes a wordless noise of inquiry, eyes still half-closed. His hair is ruffled. His hair hasn’t changed at all, Bucky realizes, still the same blond, same pattern of fine hairs at the nape of the neck. He remembers how soft that hair is under his fingers.

“Go back to sleep,” Bucky says quietly, slumping down to sit with his back against the exterior wall. “I’m just thinking.”

“There’s a first time f’r everything,” Steve says sleepily, burying his face in the pillow.

“At least I can spell it,” Bucky says, a reflex response that’s been a reflex since he was seven years old.

“Mm’m.”

Bucky leans his head back against the wall. He strokes the fingers of his warm right hand down his soft dick, waking a faint echo of that earlier sensation. It’s been a long time since his body has been a source of fun.

“Hey, Buck?”

Bucky jerks his hand away from his groin.

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember the first time you took me dancing?”

“Narrow it down.” It seems, from his patchy memories, that Bucky had gone out dancing most Saturday nights, dragging Steve along whenever Bucky’s date had had a willing friend.

“The first time it was just the two of us. A men’s private club down in Harlem.”

“I – maybe. Describe it.”

“A bar called the Drop Inn, tiled floor, kind of a hole in the wall. Lola played the piano, men were dancing with each other. You tried to follow, but you weren’t too good at it.”

He remembers a burst of irritation at himself for stepping on Steve’s foot, he’d been trying to make it a nice evening. Some guy had been looking at Steve wrong, and it had got to him, though not so bad he wanted to risk saying something about it.

“I stepped on your foot,” Bucky says slowly.

“Yeah, and then you blew me in the men’s room to apologize.”

That’s missing. Bucky snatches after the memory but it pops like a soap bubble.

“We only went now and then,” Steve continues. “You said we had to be careful. Those were some of the best times, though, because our friends there knew that we were together. You can’t grow love entirely in the dark.”

“Friends?”

“Johnny, Vito, Benny. If I went in by myself, they’d say ‘hey, it’s Bucky’s man.’ It was nice. People knew you were mine.”

“Stop,” Bucky says, panicking. “I don’t remember this. I don’t-“

“It’s okay, it’ll come back.” Steve sits up in bed, the streetlights through the curtains illuminating him oddly, an orange triangle of light wavering over his body. He looks distorted, unfamiliar.

“What if it doesn’t?” Fuck, he’d never even suspected the existence of Benny or Vito or the Drop Inn. There hadn’t been any pictures in the Smithsonian – well, of course there hadn’t. No pictures taken and nothing written down to remember them by.

“Then we’ll figure something out.” Steve swings his legs over the side of the bed. “Or make some new memories. If you want, I can tell you everything I remember, draw you their faces-“

Bucky stands up, putting a hand against the wall as he staggers a little. Steve freezes, still sitting on the bed.

“No,” Bucky snarls. “I don’t want your memories. I want mine.” He clenches his fists, trying not to panic, but he can feel his mind slipping away. The fear of his own fear is almost as strong as the terror of forgetting.

“You are remembering.” Steve promises. “I’d forgotten you stepped on my foot until you said it. Breathe with me, come on.”

He matches Steve’s slow inhale, hold, exhale. It helps enough that he’s no longer on the edge of jumping out the window to get away.

“Get some rest, Buck, please. Maybe it’ll help you remember more.”

He lies down on the other bed. It’s not like he has anywhere else to go at three in the morning. On the edge of his mind as he listens to Steve’s breathing, he finds something new.

“Benny wore a dress,” he mumbles.

“Yeah, for special occasions.”

“Belladonna.” The memories are spooling out now like ribbons into his hands. He’d come in, get changed, and she’d come out. Bella Belladonna. Bucky would dance with her. Sometimes Benny, a slight man in his forties, forgot to take his make-up off and they’d have to remind him before he went out.

“Is Benny okay?” Wrong tense. “I mean, what happened to him?”

There’s a rustle from Steve’s direction, like he’s pulling the blankets more closely around himself.

“I couldn’t find out anything about him,” Steve says painfully. “I didn’t know his last name.”

Bucky leaves before Steve wakes up, the dawn light gritty against his eyes. He heads east, into the sun.

*

Bucky’s walking down the street of Austin at dusk, trying to lose what he thinks from her tactics is a CIA tail before she identifies and reports him. He spots the discreet entrance of a gay bar, men in black leather walking in past a bouncer built like a side of beef. ‘Chain Oil’, it’s called, and he snorts under his breath, a faint memory of an English officer in 1944 surfacing, Falsworth fixing a stolen bike for the Resistance woman who lead them into Alsace. He’s upgraded to black fatigues and a mostly clean black long-sleeved t-shirt, but it takes him a little rusty flirting along with the fifteen dollar door charge to get past the bouncer. His tail, only seen out of the corner of his eye, is a professional-looking blonde woman. She’s got no chance of getting in.

“I’m on leave, don’t have my stuff with me,” he tells the guy. “I’ll dress right next time, promise, I just need… please?” He licks his lips. He used to talk his way into bars, before, except then he was wearing cheap suits and third-hand shoes.

“I’m sure someone can help you with that,” the bouncer tells him kindly, raising the rope.

His thin leather gloves don’t stand out here. It’s dim, early enough in the night that the faux-metal floor isn’t heaving with bodies. A lot of people are just talking over the pounding throb of the music. He expected something quieter, big guys with motorbike leathers, cigarette smoke in the air. Without the tang of smoke the smell of people and spilled drinks is stronger, but still familiar. He’s learned to let the memories he regains float to the surface, not to snatch at them. It can be a scent or a sound that brings old knowledge floating back, but right now it’s the feeling in the air, a not-quite-sexual tension.

He makes it to the bar but doesn’t have time to order before a broad-shouldered man in hotpants leans in, looks him up and down, and offers to let Bucky buy him a drink. He looks at the man’s collar and shakes his head. Bucky never had anyone put a collar on him, but he knows he was the type to wear one.

“Wrong side,” he shouts over the music. It comes out louder than he means it to. So much for a low profile.

“You look like you could use some instruction,” a guy half yells in his ear. He’s thin, a head shorter than Bucky, with floppy, dirty blond hair and a cocky attitude. He’s wearing leather pants and not much else, wiry muscles standing out in his arms and his ribs showing under a dusting of blond chest hair.

“I’m new,” Bucky shouts back at him. “No idea what I want. Show me the ropes?” He did this before the war, he remembers now, but times have changed. Old map, new territory, and half the map missing.

The guy grins like he can’t believe his luck.

“They have rooms - come on.” He reaches out to grab the back of Bucky’s neck and he flinches away, just stops himself from retaliating. The guy steps back, hands raised.

“I’ll follow,” Bucky shouts, shrugging apologetically.

The rooms are more like alcoves, but it’s quieter there. The guy leads him in and sits on one of the two leather-padded benches lining the side walls, gesturing for Bucky to join him.

“We’re going to set some rules. I’m a dom. You can call me sir or master. I like bondage, verbal humiliation, and face-fucking. No fluid exchange. What do you want?”

“I –,” he’s navigating in fog, he needs to pick something easy, “I can follow orders. Stay where you put me, no ropes. Want to keep my clothes on.”

“Blowjob?”

“Yeah, I can do that.” The lack of expectation is oddly freeing. “Call me whatever you want.”

“Slut?”

Buck has a faint, reflexive memory of the taste of cheap whisky, wooden floorboards under his knees and a nervous exhilaration in his blood.

“I’m your slut, sir.”

“Good boy. What’s your safeword?” Bucky looks at him blankly. The guy sighs.

“Did you even google this before coming out tonight?”

“I’ve been in the army,” Bucky says. The excuse seems to work for a lot of things.

“Oh. Sorry.” The guy looks concerned. ”Red is stop, yellow is cool down, green is all good. Do you understand that?”

“Traffic lights,” Bucky confirms. “I say red to stop.”

“Good slut.” The guy guides him down to kneel between his skinny calves. “Keep your hands at your sides. Undo my pants with your teeth.”

The pants are black leather, hot and smooth under Bucky’s cheek as his beard scratches against them. He presses his teeth into the fabric around the buttons, pulling them free one by one.

“You been thinking about this, slut? Wanting to bury your face in my crotch?”

“Yes sir.” Buck has the guy’s pants open now, can see his black cotton underwear, the bulge underneath, and the thin skin of his inner thighs with a sparse covering of blond bristles. He leans in, resting his cheek against that pale skin, so familiar.

“You’ve been hungry for it, haven’t you?” the guy says, and Bucky doesn’t know where it comes from, but his throat is aching with tears.

“Starving, sir,” he says honestly. He’d fallen into this without much of a plan, but suddenly it sounds like a really good idea. He wants to, and it’s simple, a temporary pleasure that he can have. Wanting and being wanted for an ephemeral moment, without the emotional overload Steve throws him into.

“You’re going to suck me off, slut. You’re going to beg for it.” The guy pushes Bucky’s hair back from his forehead, a gentle gesture at odds with the words.

“Please sir. Let me.” He mouths at the guy’s inner thigh, hot skin under his lips.

“Get my cock out. You can use your hands.” Bucky wraps his fingers around the waistband of the guy’s underwear and pulls, the fabric parting under his fingers as he rips a vertical tear downwards, exposing the guy’s cock. The guy makes a choking sound, but when Bucky looks up, he doesn’t look distressed. Bucky lifts a palm up to rest against the guy’s sternum, checking to see if Steve’s breathing okay.

“Wow, you are hungry, aren’t you,” the guy says softly, and the voice, too high, wrong accent, tips Bucky back to the present.

“Sorry,” he says, snatching his hand back. “I can be good.” He runs his palms up the guy’s thigh, his gloves squeaking leather against leather. ”For you, sir. I can be good for you.”

“Put a condom on me,” the guy says. “Suck my dick, slut.”

There’s an inhalation from the doorway, a quick, caught breath. Bucky was aware that the alcove is not private, that people might be watching, but he knows that sound. Steve’s outside, listening. He should stop, but he wants, he wants, and who knows when he’ll get the chance or the desire again.

He keeps quiet, rolling the condom on, mouthing at the head of the guy’s dick as it presses against his lips. This is also a muscle memory he has, opening wide, swallowing, using his tongue to trace the flare of the cockhead in his mouth. He takes it deep, gags and come back up, running his tongue along the shaft. Bucky suckles at the tip of the guy’s dick until he pushes his hips up, further into Bucky’s mouth and comes, the condom filling with hot semen. Bucky keeps his eyes closed, savouring the weight of it in his mouth. The guy says something he doesn’t hear, then grabs his hair and yanks him back.

“I said give me a color, slut.” Bucky stares at him. “Traffic lights?”

Bucky can’t speak, he can’t. Steve’s listening. He can’t reveal he’s here. He looks quickly at the doorway of the alcove.

“Hey, heavy-breathing guy outside,” the guy growls, not looking away from Bucky’s face. “Come in or fuck off.”

Steve comes in, which the guy clearly hadn’t been expecting. He lets go of Bucky’s hair and folds his arms.

“Okay, what the fuck is going on here? Is this some scene y’all are running, because it’s not manners to-“

“I’m sorry,” Steve apologizes. “It’s fine, really, I just thought he was in trouble-“

“Was that blonde woman one of your people?” Bucky interrupts, sitting back on his heels and wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

“Yeah, Sharon called me over. Had a hell of a time getting in.” Steve says. He’s wearing eyeliner, a grey tank top about two sizes too tight, and black suit pants, clearly the closest he could get to appropriate clothing on short notice. He is also visibly hard, his cock outlined against the tight black fabric.

“You should have worn the uniform,” Bucky says.

“Well, I’m sensing that we’re done for the night,” the guy says, buttoning his fly. “Can I at least get the story?”

“My captain is a little bit overprotective,” Bucky says smoothly.

“My sergeant has had kind of a rough time, and I don’t want him getting in over his head,” Steve corrects. “You seem, um, very nice.”

“Holy shit,” the guy says, looking Steve up and down. “I’ve walked into a military porn flick.”

Bucky cracks a laugh. “Buddy, you don’t know the half of it. Thanks for, y’know. I should go.”

“Oh, you guys take the alcove,” the guy says, flapping a hand at them to stay as he gets up to leave. “Talk, or whatever.”

Bucky sits on the padded bench, wiping his mouth again. Steve comes in and sits gingerly on the bench opposite him.

“You enjoyed listening,” Bucky says, his eyes flicking down to confirm that yes, Steve liked that.

“Yep,” Steve says, smiling a little sheepishly. “Sounded like you were having fun. You told me about a leather club in New York you went to once with Vito, down in the East Village with the bikers. Never got around to taking me there.”

“You don’t mind that I sucked some stranger’s cock but can’t even kiss you without going to pieces?” Bucky says tentatively.

Steve shrugs. “I don’t own you, you do what you want. And if it takes someone else to make you happy, at least you’ll be happy.”

“I’d like to be happy with you,” Bucky says quietly. “But I hurt you, and I can’t trust myself around you. I’ve only really been back-“ he waves a gloved hand around his temple “-for a few months, but it feels like I’ve been missing you for seventy years. It fucks me up.”

Even just talking about it, Bucky feels the flood of memory sweep toward him, over him, through him. It’s blindingly intense, the years of having Steve, wanting Steve.

“I don’t understand,” he finally confesses. “You’ve got the whole world to choose from, you pick the amnesiac assassin?”

“I picked my best friend,” Steve says wryly, smiling a little. “I just happen to love you, so that’s what I want. It’s your call. And no is fine, honestly, as long as you’re okay, but… don’t you want to come home, eventually?”

“Where is home?” Bucky asks wistfully.

“Somewhere we build together, I think.”

Bucky can’t speak for a moment. When it comes back, his voice shakes.

“Jesus, Steve, the shit you say. Did you write that down?”

“I just say what’s on my mind.” Steve shifts a little uncomfortably. “Speaking of, uh, I might need to get into some less confining pants.”

“You could take care of it here,” Bucky offers. “I could stay.” He takes a deep breath, gathering his courage. “I want to see. I want to stay.” It’s terrifying in the way that his returning memories used to be terrifying, like feeling the ground shift under his feet. Steve shakes him up. But Bucky has learned that he can survive this particular kind of earthquake, and that the new ground he gains outweighs the fear.

Steve unzips his pants slowly, not taking his eyes off Bucky. “We could use that traffic lights thing,” he says tentatively.

“Sure. Green. Show me what you’ve got,” Bucky says, and Steve unbuttons his shirt slowly, watching Bucky watch him. Steve even bothers to undo his cuffs and roll his sleeves back.

“You stalling, Rogers?” Bucky asks. Maybe he’s remembering wrong, maybe Steve doesn’t really go for kinky shit like being watched or-

“Maybe I just want to give you a show,” Steve says, looking up at him through his eyelashes. And that look is so filthy, so familiar that Bucky’s next breath hisses through his teeth.

“Keep going,” he says hoarsely, in case Steve gets it into his head to stop. Steve works his pants and underwear down over his hips. In the dim light his groin is shadowed. The light catches on his abdominal muscles, shining a little with sweat.

“I want to talk to you. Can I?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, already a little breathless. He feels warm, a little too big for his skin. Steve glows under the dim lights, skin smooth, his cock heavy between his legs as he wraps a hand around it and strokes once, slowly, from base to tip.

“You talk to me too,” Steve says firmly.

“You look like a fucking dream, Steve,” Bucky says, the words falling out of him. “I’ve been remembering stuff from before, the way you used to taste, it’s like an avalanche of you in my head. Every thought I ever had of you, I wanted to be yours so badly I thought it was written all over me.”

“Oh God,” Steve can’t quite keep his eyes open as he moves his fist, eyelashes fluttering. “Me too, mine too, please-“

Bucky moves towards him, thumps down onto his knees on the floor between them. The flood inside him is a steady roar now, and he thinks that he can live in this intensity, it’s not as unbearable as he thought. It’s sunshine, not fire.

“Yeah, still yours,” he agrees. “Still want you, still need you, want to touch you next time, want you to hold me down and-“

Steve arches his back, gasping as he comes into his cupped hand. “Fuck, fuck, can I touch you, please-“

“Soon,” Bucky promises, “I want to, I do, soon.” He reaches out, hand trembling, and touches Steve’s knee.

*

Another night, another motel. Bucky’s getting predictable in his habits, and he knows it’s a bad idea even as he knocks on Steve’s door. Steve lets him in as usual and there’s only one bed, as usual. After dinner, Steve welcomes him into bed with slow caresses, lying skin to skin. Steve kisses him softly, lifting a hand and working his fingers through Bucky’s long hair, close to the scalp. Bucky goes still, and Steve freezes too.

“Okay?”

“Yellow. Don’t hold my head down.”

“Got it.” Steve moves his hand carefully down to stroke Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky slowly relaxes again, and spends what feels like an hour grinding lazily against Steve’s thigh before he shudders and comes, orgasm rolling over him like a long-anticipated wave, warm and sweet.

When he finally sleeps, the dread hanging on to the edges of his mind throws him into a nightmare. In his dream they’re here, they strap him down, put his head into the machine and take his memories again, and in his dream Steve is next to him and they’re going to take him too-

As he wakes, before he even knows where he is, he reaches for the knife under his pillow, unsheathes it and in one fluid motion has it pointed at Steve’s throat.

“Easy, Buck. It’s safe,” Steve says with forced calm, from where he’s sitting up next to Bucky in bed. “I heard you having a nightmare, I was just going to wake you.”

“Shit.” Bucky reverses his grip on the knife and hands it to Steve, handle first. His left hand is as steady as a rock. He buries his shaking right hand under the bedclothes.  
Steve takes it and turns it over in his hands.

“It’s a good knife. Where’d you get it?” It’s a five-inch double-bladed trench knife, anodized in matte black so the steel doesn’t catch the light.

“Stole it after I dumped my gear. Somewhere in Columbia, I forget. Some store for rich bastards who want to kill wild animals.” Bucky’s breathing is slowing down.

“I never used a knife much. You’ll have to teach me one day.” Steve runs one finger down the blade, tests the point against a fingertip. “Sharp.”

“Be careful,” Bucky says. Steve’s watching the tip of the knife in a way he doesn’t understand, sleepy-eyed and intent.

Steve offers the knife back to Bucky, handle first.

“It’s sharp,” he repeats. “You could probably write your name on me with that point.”

Bucky stares at him. For a moment the words make no sense, and then he understands and it’s worse. Does Steve think he would, what, torture him? Steve has to understand he didn’t mean to draw the knife, he would never deliberately hurt Steve, not again. He takes the knife hastily and puts it on the bedside cabinet, pointing away from Steve.

“Sorry,” Steve says. “I, uh, I don’t know where that came from.”

“The shit you say sometimes,” Bucky forces out. It sounds weak in his ears. “What – is this a test? I don’t want to hurt you, I never…” Understatement, but his brain is moving at half speed.

“That’s why it would be safe,” Steve says. “It would hurt, but you wouldn’t hurt me. And it would give me something to remember you by, when you go… wherever you go during the day.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t follow me.” Bucky tries to get angry, but he’s unable to think without seeing his knife cutting into Steve, stuck in a species of dull horror like the dregs of a bad dream.

“Not since Austin. You keep coming back anyway.” His eyes are gentle. He’s not afraid. Bucky looks away.

“We should sleep,” Bucky says, sheathing the knife and tucking it in the gap between the mattress and the bedframe, where he’ll have to grope for it to find it again.

He thinks about it afterwards, though, eyes open in the dark. Steve wants him to cut into Steve’s skin, with a knife. He dimly remembers Steve liked to get slapped around a little, but not why Bucky had ever agreed to do that.

Then the idea twists in his head, Steve telling him what to do, _hit me touch me mark me_ , Steve letting him wring sensation from Steve’s body, Steve trusting him completely.

*

“Give it to me,” Steve tells him, as Bucky twists his face away. “Show me, come on.” Steve’s got him laid out naked on the bed, Steve propped up on one elbow alongside him with Steve’s huge hand wrapped around Bucky’s dick, watching Bucky’s face avidly.

“Christ,” Bucky gasps. “Do you want to fuck me or give me a heart attack?” Bucky feels exposed, desperate for something he can’t name.

”I got a few other ideas,” Steve says hoarsely. Bucky’s not the only one starving. “I want you to mark me up. Open me up with your left hand, big hard fingers inside me. God, I want to do everything with you.”

“You tell me what to do,” Bucky half asks, half orders. “So I know. Tell me.”

“Kiss me again.” Steve leans further over him and opens his mouth against Bucky’s, kissing till Bucky’s lips are slick with spit and tingling a little from the pressure. “You’re going to do what I tell you to do,” he murmurs into Bucky’s mouth.

“It’ll be new,” Bucky says, trying for wry. Steve laughs.

“It will,” he agrees. “Give me your hand,” Bucky does, and Steve raises it to rest at the back of his head, moving as he does so that he’s straddling Bucky’s hips, his cock brushing tantalizingly over Bucky’s own erection.

“Pull, hard.”

Buck twists his fingers into Steve’s hair and pulls, a steady tension. Steve’s mouth opens soundlessly as his head tilts backwards into the pull. Bucky slacks off, and Steve opens his half-shut eyes to glare at him.

“Pull, c’mon.”

Bucky sits up to bite at the muscular column of Steve’s throat and does what he’s told, a sharp tug this time. Steve gives a short, bitten-off moan. Bucky’s neglected cock jerks a little at the sound, and he pushes his hips up to press it against the curve of Steve’s ass.

“Good?” he asks. He wants to hear Steve say it.

“So good,” Steve assures him, the double-o in ‘good’ stretching out as Bucky tugs his hair again.

Bucky wants to get closer, share his skin, feel his heartbeat. He wants Steve to feel as raw and open as Bucky does. _Ask me ask me ask me tell me_ , he chants inside his head, begging without words.

“Cut me,” Steve says. “Put your name on me.”

Bucky whines a little, leaning back and groping for the knife- a tiny fixed blade, sharp and meticulously clean. When they’d planned this Bucky had insisted on a new knife, something with no memories. He flips it over in his gleaming metal fingers. Steve watches the twirl of the blade.

“Your initials,” Steve orders. “Right here.” He taps the left side of his chest, just below his nipple, above his heart. Steve is achingly sentimental, and utterly unconcerned about hiding it. He has always leaned into pain that way.

“Because you love me,” Bucky says, his voice thick.

“Because you love me,” Steve corrects. “Because I want to hurt just enough to see sparks when you fuck me.”

Bucky raises the knife, then shifts it to his right hand, holding it with one finger along the blade to keep it steady. He makes a shallow, vertical cut with a flick of the blade, the first part of a ‘J’. Steve wraps one hand around Bucky’s wrist and cups his other hand around Bucky’s elbow, supporting the weight of his arm.

“Keep going.” Steve’s erection rests against Bucky’s stomach, shifting with every breath, leaving little wet smears of pre-ejaculate.

Bucky cuts a horizontal line to finish the J, then starts on the B, focusing on the perfect, broken skin of Steve’s chest to the exclusion of all else past or present. Steve’s fingers tighten on his wrist as he finishes and lifts his hand away. Bucky looks up to see Steve’s pupils as big as dimes in the dim light.

“What about the other B?” Steve says.

“You sure?”

Steve laughs, a breathless little huff.

“I’m hard enough to break glass, what do you think?”

“You’re so…” Bucky looks back at Steve’s chest, his name over Steve’s heart. “Yeah,” he says, something like awe curling through him, and lifts the knife again.

The sterile dressing is ready on the bedside table. Bucky smears antiseptic over the cuts, then covers them with the dressing, taping down the edges.

“I’ll heal fine anyway,” Steve says, smiling. He looks like he’s as high as a kite.

“I wanted to,” Bucky says, kissing the hollow of Steve’s throat. “Haven’t had a chance to patch you up for years.”

“If you’re done, nurse?” Steve reaches down between their legs to bring Bucky’s cock up and press it against his own, cradled together in his hand. Bucky closes his eyes briefly at the sensation, then leans back onto his elbows, watching Steve and his bandaged heart above him. Steve strokes them both a couple of times.

“How are you doing, do you want to stop?”

“If you stop now,” Bucky says seriously, “I will paint the word ‘cocktease’ on your shiny fucking shield. Don’t you dare stop-“ but Steve is snickering like a goddamn idiot and losing his grip on Bucky's dick.

“Oh God, shut up and get the lube,” Steve says, still laughing a little. “You have the worst fucking lines.”

“You like them,” Bucky says, flicking the lid of the bottle open and smearing it over his fingers.

“What I’d like is for you to-“ Steve loses the thread of his sentence as Bucky shuffles further down the bed and presses one slicked-up metal finger against Steve’s asshole.

“Y-yeah, that.”

The sensory feedback from his left hand is feeble, but Bucky can feel the heat like a furnace inside Steve as he works a second finger in, then a third.

“What’s it feel like?” Bucky asks.

“Big, so hard, I thought they would be cold but – fuck, there, yeah.” Steve loses interest in talking for a while, rocking back onto Bucky’s metal hand in a way that could cause serious wrist injury for any normal human.

“Please,” Bucky says, holding onto the bedframe for anchorage. “Please, _please_ let me fuck you.”

“One more finger.”

Bucky makes a noise like he’s dying, but presses his little finger up against the other three and pushes in past the tight ring of muscle. He can feel Steve’s thighs tremble where they’re touching him. He holds still, letting Steve adjust.

Steve eventually shifts minutely, breathing deeply.

“Yeah,” Steve says, his voice slow, sweet and dark as molasses. He opens his eyes. His face is so peaceful it could look vacant, except for those endlessly deep blue eyes. Bucky bites his lip.

“Yeah?” he asks huskily. He pulls his fingers out slowly, stroking the rim of Steve’s asshole with his thumb.

“Yeah, come on.” Steve topples bonelessly to one side and stretches out on the sheets, looking sleek and well-fucked.

Bucky rolls over to cover Steve’s body with his own, lining his cock up with his lube-sticky left hand and thrusting into Steve in one long, smooth push, savoring every inch of the slide of his cock inside Steve’s ass. Steve arches up, suddenly urgent again, and they find a rhythm that lets Steve jack himself off and makes Bucky’s toes curl.  
“Please,” Bucky says, his mouth too used to begging to stop now, though he has everything he wants.

Steve’s eyes flutter open, burning blue. He looks Bucky straight in the eye and digs his fingers into the dressing on his chest, over Bucky’s initials.

“Mine,” Steve says, his voice hoarse and fierce. His face is a study in joy and pain, mingled so thoroughly Bucky can’t tell the difference. Bucky, feeling himself start to unravel, gives one last powerful thrust and the moment stretches out like molten glass as he comes, gasping.

“Steve-“

Steve follows, his ass clenching tight around Bucky’s cock, wringing a final shocking pulse of pleasure from him. They lie there entwined for a minute, a long pause. Bucky pulls out gently, his softening cock slippery with his own come. He presses his face into the side of Steve’s neck and curls his body around Steve, tangling their legs together. He runs his fingers through the mess of come on Steve’s stomach, reveling in the heat of Steve’s skin under the slick and the faint, chlorine smell in the air. Steve captures his hand and sucks Bucky’s fingers, licking them clean and making Bucky shiver, making words spill out of him like hoarded coins.

“You, yes, yours, mine.” He kisses Steve, uncoordinated and mouth open too wide, his teeth catching on Steve’s lower lip. His skin feels, for the first time in a long time, exactly the right size.

*

“You know, I’d really like to own a bed,” Steve says ruefully, looking at a long, fresh crack in the wood of the bedframe. “Something big and sturdy. A mattress no-one else has slept on.”

“We could get an apartment to put it in,” Bucky says thoughtfully.

Steve raises his head, a swift smile spreading across his face.

“Really?”

“Well, it would save you from chasing me all over the country.” Bucky’s hand finds Steve’s, and he holds on tight.

*

…If I meet  
you suddenly, I can't  
speak -- my voice is empty;

a delicate fire runs under  
my skin; seeing nothing,  
hearing only my own ears  
drumming, I drip with sweat;

trembling seizes my body  
and I become wetter than grass.  
at such times, I am no more than  
a step away from death;

But all this may be ventured…

-Sappho, Fragment 31.

**Author's Note:**

> Deep thanks to claudiastar for stellar beta work!


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